PR 

3493 
.J7 




COL. 

joiiii n. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Cliap Copyright No 

SlielL_,_ir_7_ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 




Ol,IA'i;ii (UjLDSMITH 



Oliver Goldsmith 



BY 

COL. JOHN A. JOYCE 

Author of "Complete Poems," ** Checkered Life, 
** Peculiar Poems," '* Zig Zag," 
"Jewels of Memory," 
Songs, etc. 



WASHINGTON 

THE NEALE COMPANY 

4JI Eleventh Street 

1900 



1 



234 



Libj^py of Ck>ngr«ae 

Tvr'o Copies Recejveo 
JAN 2 1901 

^ Copyright entry 

\.CLjfJ.. 

SECOND COPY 

daiivarsd to 

0HD£8 DIVISION 

JAN 21 1901 



Copyright, 1900, by The Neale Company 



PREFACE 



To know a Bohemian poet, you must join him 
in soul, in midnight moments, when oscillating 
between the blunders of Bacchus and vanity of 
Venus. 

I have knelt at the shrine of Goldsmith, the 
good-natured man, for fifty years, and although a 
hundred and twenty-six have passed since he 
stepped "Across the Ranges" to eternity, his 
"Vicar of Wakefield" and "Deserted Village" are 
still cherished in the homes and hearts of mankind 
with undimmed luster. 

I lay this literary leaf among the wilderness of 
flowers that decorate the memory of " Poor 
Goldy," trusting that the reader may never cease 
to love and laugh at the benevolent blunders of 
the greatest Irish poet. 

J. A. J. 

IVashington 

October I, igoo 



I DEDICATE 

ALL THAT IS GENEROUS AND NOBLE IN THIS 

VOLUME TO COLONEL WILLIAM B. ALLISON, 

A MAN WHO NEVER VIOLATED A 

PRIVATE OR POLITICAL 

PROMISE. 

J. A. J. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 



INTRODUCTION 

i4r\LivER Goldsmith was the greatest 
poetic genius of the eighteenth cen- 
tury ; and while Sam. Johnson is styled 
the "Lion of English I^iterature," from 
his ponderous tread and roar, Goldsmith 
might well be compared to the mountain 
eagle that soars over the world in sun- 
shine and storm, dipping lightly into the 
darkest valley of despair or rising 
grandly over the highest peaks of poetic 
magnificence. 

Goldsmith was cradled in the gloom of 
adversity amid the rural desolation of 
Ireland, reared in the walks of humiliat- 
ing poverty and thrown on the world like 



10 Oliver Goldsmith 

a rich wreck, broken to pieces by the 
contending billows of fortune and mis- 
fortune. 

The wail of the Banshee and the laugh 
of the fairies must have commingled at 
his birth, for his whole life was a conten- 
tion between poverty and pride, and often 
when Dame Fortune placed within his 
grasp some of the richest jewels in her 
crown, he flung them away like a petulant 
child and turned his back on the gilded 
palaces of power to suffer and starve 
around the rickety stairs of Green Arbor 
Court or Grub Street. 

His poverty and pride went hand in 
hand, and while at times he seemed to 
conquer the former, he never could subdue 
the latter. But while pride was his be- 
setting sin, it also was his constant solace 
and kept him afloat amid the breakers 
that overwhelmed many stronger men. 
f The storm was never dark enough to 



Oliver Goldsmith 11 

dim the lustre of his hope, and the night 
was never so long but bright rays from 
the dawning illuminated his squalid 
quarters. When the fierce blasts of 
winter howled like a wolf through his 
broken window and down his cheerless 
chimney, he had heart enough to lend 
the poor beggar girl his last pot of coals 
and crawl himself under a threadbare rug 
to keep from freezing. 

The starving and naked never appealed 
to him in vain, and even when his last 
shilling was gone he would send his only 
good coat to the pawn-shop to relieve the 
distress of some one more wretched than 
himself. 

The pathway of Goldsmith was tangled 
with thorns, and even the few wild roses 
that were plucked by the wayside he be- 
stowed upon the first needy traveler he 
met — parting with the perfume of pros- 
perity while he continued to tread the 



/ 



12 Oliver Goldsmith 

bleeding highway of adversity. His 
nature was as unselfish as the sun, light- 
ing up the dark nooks of despair as well 
as irradiating the pinnacles of pomp and 
power. His poetic heart was as light as 
a gazelle skimming over the plain or 
meandering around mountain steeps. 

His literary flight was like some long, 
rolling river, beginning its course in up- 
land springs and peaks, winding through 
sunlight and shadow to the brawling 
brook, murmuring with a gentle flow 
through meadow lands and fallow fields, 
then rushing through rocky rapids and 
leaping over fearful falls to sink forever 
in the dark waters of the limitless 
ocean. 

The sunny side of his character was a 
background of sadness, and while his 
blundering brogue enlivened his compan- 
ions at the "Three Jolly Pigeons" or 
*' Literary Club," his weary heart often 



Oliver Goldsmith 15 

beat to the siren echoes of suicide in the 
lonely hours of midnight when no sound 
was heard but the chiming clock in the 
church tower or the mournful howl of the 
distant watchdog. 

Mirth, humor and melancholy ran a 
race for the mastery, and while the world 
laughed at his innocent credulity, it was 
compelled to worship at the classic shrine 
of his poetry and at the Pantheon portals 
of his philosophy. 

From boyhood, Goldsmith was a con- 
stant prey to a horde of parasites, and 
whenever his financial feathers grew 
strong and beautiful, these irnpecunious 
wretches plucked the fat goose and left 
him again naked and ungainly, to sweat 
as a bookseller's hack or starve in the 
gloom of a I^ondon garret. He came 
upon the world like a comet in the sky 
when shadows of evening hasten the foot- 
steps of declining day. His radiant 



14 Oliver Goldsmith 

beams were slow in development, but 
gradually the warm glow of his genius 
spread over the world like a midnight 
meteor, filling all space with the dazzling 
light of his intellect and leaving behind 
a beauty that will never fade and a 
memory that shall never die. 
As the Celtic Congreve says : 

*' The bards may go down to the place of their 
slumbers, 
The lyre of the charmer be hushed in the 
grave, 
But far in the future the power of their 
numbers 
Shall kindle the hearts of the faithful and 
brave. 

*' It will waken an echo in souls deep and 
lonely, 
Like voices of reeds by the winter wind 
fanned ; 
It will call up a spirit of freedom when 
only 
Her breathings are heard in the songs of 
our land ! " 



Oliver Goldsmith 15 



BIRTH AND RURAL SCHOOL DAYS 

Oliver Goldsmith was the fifth child of 
Rev. Charles Goldsmith, a country parson 
of the English Church, who held a poor 
living at the obscure village of Pallasmore, 
in the County of Longford, amid the rural 
solitudes of Ireland. Oliver was born at 
this place on the loth of November, 1728, 
one hundred and seventy-two years ago. 
He was very young and innocent when 
he was born, and continued so for the re- 
mainder of his life ! 

Up to the age of seventeen the educa- 
tion of little Oliver was secured around 
the romantic scenery of Kilkinny, Lissoy, 
Elphin, Athlone, and Ballymahon, places 
that made a lasting impression on his 
mystic mind and gave color, beauty and 
force to the subsequent products of his 



16 Oliver Goldsmith 

prolific pen. From his first attendance 
at school he was pronounced a blockhead ; 
and his relative Elizabeth Delap, his first 
teacher, said, " Never was so dull a 
boy." 

At the age of nine we find him attend- 
ing the school of Paddy Byrne at Lissoy, 
and little did the palavering pedagogue 
know the wealth of poetic intellect that 
lay slumbering in the heart and soul of 
his shy and awkward pupil. Paddy 
Byrne had served in the wars of Marl- 
borough as quartermaster in Spain, and 
had a large stock of tales, campaign stor- 
ies, fairy lore and a knack at singing Irish 
ballads and spouting verses of his own 
composition. Between scholastic work 
and recreation he was fond of amusing his 
scholars with stories that thronged his 
memory, and we may be sure that none 
of them were lost on the fertile brain of 
little Oliver. 



Oliver Goldsmith 17 

Thirty years afterwards, amid the whirl 
of London life and overburdened with 
hack work for Shylock publishers, he 
gave a graphic picture of "the village 
school master" that has never been 
equaled or surpassed. Here it is : 

" Beside you straggling fence that skirts the 

way, 
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, 
There in his uoisy mansion, skilled to rule, 
The village master taught his little school ; 
A man severe he was and stern to view — 
I knew him well, and every truant knew ; 
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper, circling round. 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. 
Yet he was kind ; or if severe in aught, 
The love he bore to learning was in fault. 
The village all declared how much he knew— 
'T was certain he could write and cipher too ; 



18 Oliver Goldsmith 

Lands he could measure, terms aud tides pre- 
sage, 
And even the story ran that he could gauge. 
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, 
For even though vanquished, he could argue 

still,— 
While words of learned length and thundering 

sound 
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around, — 
And still they gazed and still the wonder grew, 
That one small head could carry all he knew ! " 

A violent attack of smallpox forced 
Oliver to quit the school of Paddy Byrne, 
and when he had recovered, his grotesque 
form and pitted face produced in the be- 
holder a feeling of laughter that no doubt 
caused the little fellow many a heart pang. 
From this time forward he seems to have 
been the butt of his associates and the 
sport of Dame Fortune in the distribution 
of her fickle favors. He attended school 
for a while at Elphin, and when he was 
eleven years old was sent to a higher 



Oliver Goldsmith 19 

school at Athlone, five miles from Lissoy, 
taught by a minister named Campbell. 
He remained here two years, and then 
went for a period of four years to the 
Latin school of Rev. Patrick Hughes at 
Edges worth town in the County of Long- 
ford, where he finished the ordinary 
branches of a liberal education. 

While Goldsmith was tossed about 
from school to school in this rural region 
we only hear of him during vacation at 
Lissoy as a shy, awkward, comical boy, 
and thought by his school-mates ''no 
better than a fool." But his last teacher 
gave him credit for classical knowledge. 
He took great delight in the translations of 
Ovid, Horace, and Tacitus, but cared little 
for the orations of Cicero. Dr. Johnson 
says that ' ' he was a plant that flowered 
late and nothing remarkable about him 
when young." Yet when he was only 
eleven years of age in his uncle's house at 



20 Oliver Goldsmith 

Klphin he surprised the family, and the 
fiddler Cummings, who called him ugly 
^sop, with this sharp reply : 

" Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, 
See ^sop dancing and his monkey playing." 

At the age of seventeen it was a great 
puzzle what to do with Goldsmith. His 
father was perplexed for the future of his 
wayward son. The family funds had 
recently been brought to their lowest ebb 
by the pride of the old minister in giving 
a marriage portion to his eldest daughter 
Catherine, who had imprudently and priv- 
ately married a Mr. Daniel Hodson, the son 
of a neighboring landed gentleman. 

If Oliver was to attend the Univer- 
sity it must be as a sizar, or poor scholar, 
who receives food, tuition and lodging 
for almost nothing ; who performs menial 
work, wears a coarse gown, a red cap, and 
is a kind of college football for tyrannical 



Oliver Goldsmith 21 

teachers and scheming scholars. At this 
proposition his sensitive nature recoiled, 
and he expressed a preference to be bound 
to some trade, where wealthy mediocrity 
would not spurn indigent superiority. 



22 Oliver Goldsmith 



TRINITY COLLEGE ESCAPADES 

The advice of his good-natured uncle, 
Rev. Thomas Contarine, finally prevailed, 
and on the nth of June, 1745, Goldsmith 
was admitted last of a list of eight sizars 
at Trinity College, Dublin. For four 
years this human sensitive plant must 
have endured the agonies of the damned 
as pictured in the scorching lines of the 
immortal Dante, who suffered himself 
many of the humiliating tortures that fell 
to the lot of poor little Oliver. Flood and 
Burke were his schoolmates, and many 
others who afterwards became renowned 
in church and state ; yet their lives were 
not tormented by poverty nor blistered 
by the contempt of taunting teachers. 

Goldsmith soon fell under the tutorship 
of a brute named Wilder, who took special 



Oliver Goldsmith 2} 

delight in persecuting the young sizar 
and humiliating him on every occasion. 
In May, 1747, two months after the death 
of his famished father, Oliver took part in 
a college riot against the police of Dublin, 
who had unjustly arrested one of his class. 
Several persons were killed and wounded 
in the attack on the prison. Four of the 
ring-leaders were expelled from the col- 
lege, and among four others publicly 
reprimanded was Oliver Goldsmith. To 
this day the Latin record of the University 
shows that he "favored sedition and 
riot " — a just course against tyranny. 

The tyranny of Wilder now became 
worse than ever. One evening, after 
Goldsmith had received several shillings 
for a lot of ballads furnished a Dublin 
music dealer, he invited " a party of 
young friends of both sexes from the 
city ' ' to supper and a dance in his out- 
side detached quarters. When the fun 



24 Oliver Goldsmith 

of the revelers was at its highest, the 
wicked Wilder broke into the rooms, 
abused Oliver before the whole company 
and wound up his midnight raid by giv- 
ing the poor fellow a thrashing. The 
gay party dispersed in a hurry, and the 
next morning Goldsmith left the college, 
after selling his books, and started for 
Cork and America with only a shilling in 
his pocket ! He wandered around for a 
week in a half-dazed and starving condi- 
tion and finally went home to his brother 
Henry, who prevailed on him to go back 
to the college, where he secured re-admis- 
sion. He continued to be "cautioned" 
and ' ' fined ' ' in the ' ' buttery books ' ' to 
the end of his University term, February, 
1749, when he obtained the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts, graduating the lowest 
in his class. 

Thus at the age of twenty-one he 
emerged from the classical halls of old 



Oliver Goldsmith 25 

Trinity with the lowest honors ; yet never 
in the history of that renowned University 
has there been one of its scholars that has 
conferred higher honors on his Alma 
Mater or greater pleasure to the world, 
than the sensitive, rollicking, impulsive, 
unselfish Irish Goldsmith. 

A score of anecdotes are told of his rare 
eccentricities and rebounding nature. 
Who has not heard of his waiting in mid- 
night hours on the streets of Dublin, 
leaning against a lamp-post or crouching 
around a corner, to hear the vagrant bal- 
lad singers reciting his pathetic or rollick- 
ing songs and then retiring through the 
back gate of the college, where he meets 
a poor beggar woman and her shivering 
children, for whose immediate relief he 
gives up all his bed blankets, splits open 
the ticking and crawls into the feathers 
to keep himself from freezing that memor- 
able winter night? 



26 Oliver Goldsmith 

What a glorious example of charity, 
heart, and benevolent humanity ! The 
records of the human race furnish no finer 
or more sympathetic soul than was found 
in the God-given genius of Goldsmith. 

A quotation from his ' ' Bee ' ' papers 
will illustrate the unselfishness of the man 
and the great tenderness of his noble 
nature : ' ' Why was this heart of mine 
formed with so much sensibility, or why 
was not my fortune adapted to its im- 
pulse? Tenderness without a capacity 
for relieving only makes the man who 
feels it more wretched than the object 
which sues for assistance." 



Oliver Goldsmith 27 



I.AUNCHED ON THE OCEAN OF LIFE 

This human craft was now launched on 
the ocean of life, less prepared for its buf- 
feting billows than any of his college 
mates. With a poetic soul for a compass, 
sentiments for sails and a tender heart for 
a rudder, the great wonder is that he was 
not engulfed by the first storm that struck 
his lurching barque. For two years he 
wandered around as a " Buckeen," or 
genteel vagabond, among his relatives 
and friends, living part of the time with 
his mother at Ballymahon and rollicking 
at wayside inns and ale houses with idle 
and dissolute companions. We can see 
the *'man in black," "Moses," and 
" Marlow " singing with " Tony Lump- 
kins ' ' the festive song of the ' ' Three 
Jolly Pigeons ' ' : 



28 Oliver Goldsmith 

" Then come put the jorum about, 

Aud let us be merry and clever ; 
Our hearts and our liquors are stout — 

Here's the 'Three Jolly Pigeons' forever. 
Let some cry up woodcock or hare, 

Your bustards, your ducks and your widgeons, 
But of all the gay birds in the air. 

Here ' s a health to the ' 'f h ree Jolly Pigeons. ' ' ' 

What a wonderful analogy exists in the 
festive Bacchanalian bouts of Burns and 
the hilarity of Goldsmith. In the year 
1 75 1, at the age of twenty- three, the Irish 
bard made midnight musical with his 
verses at Ballymahon, while the Scotch 
bard, in 1791, at the age of thirty- three, 
enlivened the ale houses and taverns of 
Dumfries with his philosophic poetry and 
comical songs. I can hear even now 
himself and his rollicking chums deify 
their mutual friend, John Barleycorn : 

" Then let us toast John Barleycorn — 
Each man a glass in hand ; 



Oliver Goldsmith 29 

Aud may his great posterity- 
Ne'er fail iu old Scotland ! " 

Burns was fifteen years old, and had 
begun writing poetry on his father's farm, 
when the dazzling Goldsmith died ; and 
it seems that the spirit of the ' ' Mountain 
Dew ' ' of the Emerald Isle was transferred 
in a double measure to the heart of Bobby 
Burns, for the number of foaming ales and 
' ' hot scotches ' ' he drank on winter 
nights might suffice to float a ship. If 
there is a Scotchman iu the world who 
has ever attended a Caledonian banquet 
on St. Andrew's night, he can have an 
idea of the brimming beakers that Burns 
could empty in one of his tavern testi- 
monials. 



The storm without might roar aud rustle, 
Tam did not mind the storm a whistle ; 
Kings might be blessed, but Tam was glorious- 
O'er all the ills of life victorious ! " 



30 Oliver Goldsmith 

Between hunting, fishing, spreeing and 
teaching, Goldsmith spent another year 
in a kind of aimless life ; but at last he 
threw up his tutorship in the family of 
Mr. Finn, of Roscommon, and with a fine 
horse and thirty pounds in his pocket, he 
started again for Cork and America. Bad 
luck was his portion as usual. After 
six weeks of strolling about Ireland, he 
appeared at his mother's home in a for- 
lorn condition, riding an old, broken- 
down horse that he called " Fiddleback." 
It seems that he had gone to Cork, se- 
cured passage for America, put his kit 
aboard the vessel, and while "larking" 
about town a favorable breeze arose and 
the ship suddenly sailed with his passage 
money and luggage. He was compelled 
to sell his good horse and work his way 
back to relatives for another start. His 
mother must have been as much mortified 
as when he brought the gross of green 



Oliver Goldsmith 31 

spectacles home from the fair in exchange 
for the young colt bartered away for al- 
most nothing. 



32 Oliver Goldsmith 



GOLDSMITH AS A HORSK TRADER 

This scene iu the ' * Vicar of Wakefield ' ' 
between the good " Deborah," presump- 
tively Goldsmith's mother, and old "Dr. 
Primrose," his father, will show some of 
the eccentricities and mistakes of 
"Moses" : — 

' * ' My dear wife, as we are now about 
to hold up our heads, it would be proper 
to sell the colt at a neighboring fair and 
buy a horse that would carry single or 
double and make a pretty appearance at 
church or upon a visit.' " 

Dr. Primrose intimates that he intends 
to go to the fair himself and sell the colt, 
but his good wife would not listen to such 
a thing, as the parson had a bad cold, 
and she remarked : 

* ' ' No, my dear ; our son Moses is a 



Oliver Goldsmith 33 

discreet boy and can buy and sell to a 
very great advantage ; you know all our 
great bargains are of his purchasing. He 
always stands out and haggles and 
actually tires them till he gets a 
bargain.' " 

Dr. Primrose continues and says : 
" ' I was willing to entrust my son with 
the sale of the colt, for I had a good opin- 
ion of his prudence, and the next morning 
I perceived his sisters mighty busy in 
fixing out Moses for the fair, — trimming 
his hair, brushing his buckles and cocking 
his hat with pins. The business of the 
toilet being over, we had at last the satis- 
faction of seeing him mounted upon the 
colt, with a deal-box before him for 
grocery supplies. He wore a suit of that 
cloth called "thunder and lightning," 
which, though grown too short, was much 
too good to be thrown away. His waist- 
coat was of gosling green, and his sisters 



34 Oliver Goldsmith 

had tied his hair with a broad black rib- 
bon. We all followed him several paces 
from the door, bawling after him, " good 
luck ! good luck ! ' ' till we could see him 
no longer. >i< ^ ^ 

" ' I wonder what keeps Moses so long 
at the fair, as it is now almost night- 
fall.' 

" * Never mind our son,' cried my wife ; 
* depend upon it, he knows what he is 
about. I '11 warrant we '11 never see him 
sell his hen of a rainy day. I have seen 
him buy such bargains as would amaze 
one. I '11 tell you a good story about that 
that will make you split your sides with 
laughing. But, as I live, yonder comes 
Moses without a horse and the box on his 
back.' 

' ' As she spoke, Moses came slowly on 
foot and sweating under the deal-box, 
which he had strapped around his 
shoulders like a peddler. ' Welcome, 



Oliver Goldsmith 35 

welcome Moses ! Well, my boy, what 
have you brought us from the fair ? ' 'I 
have brought you myself, ' cried Moses, 
with a sly look, and resting the box on 
the dresser. 'Ay, Moses,' cried my wife, 

* that we know, but where is the horse ? ' 

* I have sold him,' cried Moses, ' for three 
pounds five shillings and twopence.' 

* Well done, my good boy,' cried my wife ; 
' I knew you would touch them off in fine 
style. Between ourselves, three pounds 
five shillings and twopence is no bad 
day's work. Come, let us have the 
money ! ' 'I have brought back no 
money,' cried Moses. ' I have laid it all 
out in a great bargain, and here it is. 
Here they are — a gross of green specta- 
cles with silver rims and shagreen cases.' 

* ''A gross of green spectacles," ' repeated 
my wife in a faint voice. * And you have 
parted with the pretty colt and brought 
us back nothing but a gross of paltry 



36 Oliver Goldsmith 

green spectacles ! ' * Dear mother, ' cried 
the boy, 'why don't you listen to reason? 
I had the sharpers at a dead bargain or I 
should not have bought them. The silver 
rims alone will sell for double the money ! ' 
* A fig for your silver rims ! ' cried my 
wife in a passion. ' I dare say they 
won't sell for half the money as broken 
silver, five shillings an ounce.' 'You 
need be under no uneasiness,' said I, 
' about selling the rims, for the whole lot 
are not worth a sixpence, as they are only 
varnished copper.' ' What, what ! ' cried 
my wife. ' Not silver, the rims not silver ? ' 
' No,' cried I ; 'no more silver than your 
sauce-pan ! ' ' And so we have parted 
with our sweet little colt for a gross of 
green spectacles. A murrain on such 
trumpery ; throw them in the fire — hang 
the blockhead. Oh you little idiot ! ' " 

By this time the boy saw that he had 
been swindled by a couple of confidence 



Oliver Goldsmith 37 

sharpers at the fair. Yet this was only one 
of the long train of misfortunes that fell 
to the lot of our confiding " Moses" ! 
Such guileless credulity has seldom been 
found in man, and the foregoing escapade 
of "poor Goldy," as told of himself in 
the ' ' Vicar of Wakefield, ' ' well illustrates 
the innocence and unsuspicious nature of 
this great character — this benevolent 
bunch of intellectuality. 



y8 Oliver Goldsmith 



ROLI.ICKING AROUND DUBLIN AND 
EDINBURGH — PATRIOTISM 

Goldsmith, soon after visiting his 
mother, started again for London on his 
horse " Fiddleback," with fifty pounds in 
his pocket, to study law in the Temple. 
He only got as far as Dublin, where he 
met a number of boon companions, with 
whom he spent the fifty pounds in drink- 
ing and gambling, and was compelled to 
fall back again upon his relatives. 

He was forgiven once more, and for the 
last time started from home to study 
medicine in Edinburgh. Thus, at the 
age of twenty-four he left the enchanting 
scenes of Lissoy, and he says " the most 
pleasing horizon in Nature," never again 
to press the green sod of old Ireland, or 
mingle his voice in the chorus of the 



Oliver Goldsmith 39 

"Three Jolly Pigeons." However, he 
never forgot the rural companions of his 
youth, and always kept a warm spot in 
his heart for his native land. He was a 
true Irishman in the best sense of the 
term, and while it has often been alleged 
by surface readers of his character that 
he was more English than Irish and 
never wrote anything in praise of his 
own countrj^, I saj^ emphatically, and 
challenge successful contradiction, that 
his pen and voice was never purchased 
by British gold ; and this is more than 
can be said of the Nugents, Kelleys, 
Sheridans, Burkes, and Moores ! 

No, when the Earl of Northumber- 
land, Bishop Percy, Sam Johnson and 
Lord North tried to purchase his pen to 
assist tyranny during the American Rev- 
olution, he spurned their brilliant offers 
with contempt from the gloom of a L,on- 
don garret, preferring to be even a book- 



40 Oliver Goldsmith 

seller's hack rather than a toadying pen- 
sioner on the rolls of royalty ! His heart 
always turned to old Ireland, and the 
letter to his brother Maurice in January, 
1770, shows abiding love for his Irish 
friends, soliciting correspondence from 
home to cheer his hours of carking care. 
And again to his brother Henry, in his 
poem of ' ' The Traveler, ' ' he breaks out 
in a sigh of sorrow : 

"Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 
My heart untravel'd fondly turns to thee ; 
Still to my brother turns ,with ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain." 

And to prove the climax of his Irish 
patriotism, hear his classical indictment 
in the "Deserted Village" against the 
tyranny of landlords and princes, who 
brought desolation and death to his own 
** Sweet Auburn" : 



Oliver Goldsmith 41 

"Sweet, smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, 
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms with- 
drawn ; 
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen. 
And desolation saddens all thy green : 
One only master grasps the whole domain, 
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, 
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way ; 
Along thy glades, a solitary guest, 
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ; 
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies 
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries ; 
Sunk are thy bowers, in shapeless ruin all, 
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall ; 
And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's 

hand, 
Far, far away, thy children leave the land. 
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay : 
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride. 
When once destroyed can never be supplied." 



42 Oliver Goldsmith 

Goldsniitli remained around Edinburgh 
for eighteen months, strolling among the 
Highlands, feasting at banquet boards or 
drinking and singing with wild students 
at taverns and ale houses. We may be 
sure that he paid more attention to amuse- 
ment than to medicine, and the money 
received from Irish friends found its way 
into drinking tills of taverns. 

Still restless, he took the sudden notion 
to visit Holland and finish his medical 
studies at I^eyden. But the vessel in 
which he and half a dozen adventurers 
embarked, after being out a few days, was 
driven back to land. The medical students 
now indulged in social cheer, and were 
finally arrested for rioting and put in jail 
for two weeks as French sympathizers. 
The ship finally sailed without Gold- 
smith, and all on board were lost, show- 
ing that Providence kept watch over the 
wandering minstrel. He finally reached 



Oliver Goldsmith 43 

Leyden, where for ten months he hung 
about the great Gaubius, storing his er- 
ratic brain with chemical lore. 



44 Oliver Goldsmith 



TRAVELS ON THE CONTINENT 

Medicine could not minister to a mind 
like Goldsmith's. Baron Holberg, the 
Danish humorist, had then but recently 
made a tour of Europe on foot, without 
friends or money, nothing but a fluent 
tongue and sweet voice to pay the ex- 
pense of his travel, after which he re- 
turned to Copenhagen to live in opulence 
and be honored by Kings and Queens. 
With a flute and a clean shirt and a shil- 
ling, Goldsmith thought he could do like- 
wise, and at onee tossed aside his medical 
books, departing from I^eyden on foot to 
view strange lands and study continental 
customs. He passed through Flanders, 
France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, 
visiting the principal cities or lingering 
along rural roads and hamlets as a 



Oliver Goldsmith 45 

philosophic vagabond, singing and play- 
ing his familiar flute for bread and bed. 

Although ' ' chill penury froze the genial 
current of his soul, ' ' it could not fetter the 
flight of his mystic muse, which sung to 
the world the r3^thmic numbers of the lone 
' ' Traveler. ' ' How the heart of our poet 
must have swelled with exultation and 
pride as he viewed the architectural 
grandeur of Paris, climbed the rugged 
glaciers of the towering Alps, or wandered 
through the artistic halls of Venice, 
Verona, and Florence. I behold him now 
in lonely contemplation, musing and com- 
posing immortal verses on Alpine peaks ; 
seated at the foot of some great master- 
piece of art, shining from the sculptured 
walls of Florentine palaces ; debating at 
Universities for supper and shelter, or tun- 
ing his magic flute in twilight hours for 
the delight of dancing peasantry ! Glor- 
ious, unconscious genius ! 



46 Oliver Goldsmith 

After a wild, lunatic ramble of more 
than two years, we find this guileless 
creature, in February, 1766, landing 
under the chalk cliflfs at Dover without a 
farthing or friend to cheer his heavy heart. 
London was the goal of his ambition — 
that seething, voracious gulf, where 
Dryden, Butler, Otway, and Chatterton 
had been swallowed up in the hungry 
maw, and now Goldsmith was ' ' one the 
more, to baffled millions which had gone 
before. ' ' In working his way to the cap- 
ital he was compelled to attach himself to 
a strolling band of players, who performed 
in taverns and barns for the few shillings 
that rustic simplicity paid for mediocre 
amusements. 



Oliver Goldsmith 47 



LONDON WHIRLPOOL 

He filially entered London, shambled 
through its crooked lanes, wondered 
at its stately streets and mitral monu- 
ments, pondered over its temples and 
towers and stood on the strand near the 
crumbling arches of London Bridge — 
where the dark waters of the Thames roll 
its sluggish circles to the sea. 

Here he is at last, at the age of twenty- 
seven years and three months, leaning 
against some ruined warehouse or broken 
column, not knowing in that Leviathan 
pool of human hopes where to turn for 
work, bread or shelter. Alone in the 
midst of millions — 

" Lone as a solitary cloud, 
Lone as a corpse within a shroud," 



48 Oliver Goldsmith 

He was not the first one who had come 
up to London to set the Thames afire 
with his intellectual torch. Men from 
every land under the sun had sought to 
inflame and burn up the dark waters, but 
they roll on to-day as heedless of the 
world as when ' ' Poor Goldy ' ' gazed into 
the running mirror. Yet, after all the 
failures of these ideal wanderers to reap 
the rich grain of financial fortune, they 
are the men that the world cares to honor 
and remember, when myriads of their 
sordid commercial contemporaries are lost 
in the waters of oblivion. I The trials he 
encountered in the cold winds and mists 
of March to prevent absolute starvation, 
and the shifts he must have made to keep 
from freezing in midnight hours when he 
" lived among the beggars of Axe-Lane," 
will never be known. 

An usher at a boarding-school seems to 
have been his first employment, but after a 



Oliver Goldsmith 49 

few months' trial he declares that he would 
rather be an under turnkey in Newgate 
prison than suffer the cruel humiliations of 
his task. He here submits a list of civil 
service questions and answers for primary 
teachers who intend to become first-class 
ushers. Hear him : 

" Have you been bred apprentice to the 
business?" ''No." "Then you will 
never do for a school. ' ' 

"Can you dress the boys' hair?" 
"No." "Then you won't do for the 
school. ' ' 

" Have you had the small - pox ? " 
"No." "Then you won't do for a 
school." 

' ' Can you lie three in a bed ? " " No. ' ' 
" Then you will never do for a school." 

' ' Have you a good stomach ? " " Yes. ' ' 
"Then you will certainly not do for a 
school." 

"Well, sir, since you are not fitted for 



50 Oliver Goldsmith 

the peculiar position of usher, what do 
you think of becoming an author? I '11 
show you forty dull, jog-trot fellows 
about town who live in opulence by writ- 
ing rotten stuff, who if bred cobblers 
would all their lives have only mended 
shoes but never made them." 

So the usher hailed with joy the position 
of authorship and became a worshiper at 
the shrine of his literary mother of Grub 
Street. 

But for awhile ' ' Poor Goldy ' ' was a 
pounder of pills and a kind of peripatetic 
doctor. Poverty pursued him with re- 
lentless fury, and his natural improvi- 
dence quickened her pace, yet necessity 
compelled him to mould monuments of 
thought that will endure and live when 
temples in stone and columns in bronze 
shall perish under the corroding touch of 
Time. Competition in English literature 
was at its height when Goldsmith took a 



Oliver Goldsmith 51 

job of hack-work with Grifiiths, proprie- 
tor of the Monthly Review. His idea of 
hack-work is given in an epitaph to his 
friend : 

" Here lies poor Ned Purden, from misery free, 
Who long was a bookseller's hack ; 
He led such a damnable life in this world 
That I don't think he'll wish to come back!" 

A long list of Irish, Scotch and English 
second-class writers were devouring each 
other on the newspapers, reviews and 
magazines of lyOndon, while first-class 
stars like Johnson, Smollet, Fielding, 
Collins, Gray, Chesterfield, Gibbon, 
Burke, Ramsey, Cibber, Garrick, Ho- 
garth, and Reynolds shone in the firma- 
ment of British literature and art. 

Yet into this list of intellectual gladia- 
tors. Goldsmith, the youngest, threw his 
shining lance and challenged them to 
combat. His lodgings in Green Arbor 



52 Oliver Goldsmith 

Court, among tinkers, beggars and wash- 
erwomen were not calculated to inspire 
philosophic prose or patriotic poetry. Yet 
his "Inquiry into Polite lyearning," ''The 
Citizen of the World, ' ' Histories of Greece, 
Rome, and England, "The Traveler," 
"Vicar of Wakefield," "The Deserted 
Village," and "Animated Nature" are 
some of the rare flowers that sprung from 
this hot-bed of wretchedness. 



Oliver Goldsmith 53 



HAPPY DAYS 

Smollet introduced Goldsmith to New- 
bery, the publisher, who employed our 
poet ou the British Magazine and Public 
Ledger. About this time a ray of pros- 
perity shone on * ' Poor Goldy, ' ' and we 
find him in better quarters at Wine Office 
Court and the Temple, giving literary 
suppers to "Jupiter" Johnson and his 
satellites. His appearance at the ban- 
quet board toasting stag guests must 
have been ludicrous in the extreme. Im- 
agine a five foot five, blue-eyed man, 
wearing a puffed, powdered wig, green 
vest, ruffled shirt, plum-colored coat, 
scarlet breeches, buckled pumps, and 
shining sword dangling by his side, glass 
in hand, singing Johnny Armstrong's 
' ' Last Good Night, " or the " Three Jolly 



54 Oliver Goldsmith 

Pigeons ' ' and you will have some idea of 
this good-natured, blundering beau, who 
sought to cover up the deformities of na- 
ture with the artistic circus suits of his 
trusting tailor Filby. Poor fellow, his 
heart was so honest and his acts were so 
innocent that he never, to his dying day, 
appreciated his funny attitude nor the 
laughter he provoked among his tavern 
companions or the lords of the Literary 
Club. He was, however, a welcome 
guest at the coffee house of the neglected 
and the mansion of the renowned, and his 
ringing laughter and guileless wit infected 
all who came under the spell of his genial 
magnetism. 

The mellifluous flow of his liquid 
language could soften the dry est subject, 
and even commonplace things were rele- 
gated to the realms of romance. His 
sententious sentences and delightful dic- 
tion sends a thought through the heart, 



Oliver Goldsmith 55 

swift as an arrow from the quiver of 
Diana. Prosperity could not inflate his 
pride nor adversity depress it. ; He walked 
his wild, wandering way as God had 
created him, and the petty rules and 
regulations of mankind were ignored in 
the calendar of his philosophy. If his 
shrewdness had kept pace with his gener- 
osity he might have left behind a million 
pounds, but as it was he left not a penny, 
but debts ; and was buried by the charity 
of friends. It is an incontrovertible fact 
that men of great genius have no apti- 
tude for accumulating or retaining money, 
while men of mediocrity and mathemati- 
cal methods leave millions behind them, 
to be separated and squandered by quar- 
reling children and laughing lawyers. 

" Poor Goldy " was vain, frivolous and 
improvident, yet in spite of this he was 
modest, faithful and philosophic. Such 
a medlev of contradictions has seldom 



56 Oliver Goldsmith 

been seen in the same man, and we are 
often at a loss to know whether to pro- 
nounce him "an inspired idiot" or a sage 
from the school of Socrates. 

There is no Irishman so poor that does 
not have others poorer than himself as de- 
pendents. Goldsmith was cursed with a 
crowd of perambulating parasites — liter- 
arj' tramps — who took advantage of his 
weakness and generosity. 

The Kelleys, Purdens, and Pilkentons 
leached upon his life. It is related that 
Pilkenton rushed into the poet's room one 
morning to borrow twenty guineas to 
purchase a cage for some white mice he 
intended to present a grand lady, whose 
influence and wealth he wished to com- 
mand. Goldsmith told his impecunious 
chum that he had but a guinea, when 
Pilkenton suggested that his gold watch 
might be pawned to raise the desired 
amount of money. "That's so," said 



Oliver Goldsmith 57 

Goldsmith, "I never thought of that" ; 
and suitmg the action to the words, 
pulled out his fine watch, gave it to the 
wretch, who quickl}^ placed it in pawn, 
made away with the money, and did not 
see his benefactor again until on his 
deathbed, when " Goldy," hearing of his 
condition, hastened to his relief, gave 
more money to purchase medicine, and 
forgave the fraud practiced on his unsus- 
pecting heart. 

Thackeray says that Goldsmith ' ' carried 
no weapon save the harp on which he 
played, and with which he delighted 
great and humble, young and old, the 
captains in the tents, the soldiers round 
the camp fires — or the women and chil- 
dren in the villages at whose porches he 
stopped to play, and sing his simple 
songs of love and beauty." 

At the age of thirty-six Goldsmith 
made his first great hit with the poem of 



58 Oliver Goldsmith 

the ''Traveler," which came from the 
press of Newbery in December, 1764. It 
immediately took rank with the best 
poems in the English language, and from 
the cot of the peasant to the palace of the 
prince it became a welcome guest, and 
crowned its author with a laurel wreath 
of poetic victory. Envious authors and 
domineering aristocrats who had insulted 
him in his days of obscurity and poverty 
now gave him universal praise. 

How he pictures friendship in this 
quotation : 

" And what is friendship but a name, 
A charm that lulls to sleep ; 
A shade that follows wealth or fame, 
And leaves the wretch to weep? " 

Fifteen months after the issue of the 
''Traveler," the "Vicar of Wakefield " 
was launched on the world, not however 
until it had accumulated the dust of more 



Oliver Goldsmith 59 

than two 3'ears in the desk of Newber}^ 
If his poetry secured the author honest 
praise, his effort in the field of historic 
fancy made a lasting impression, and 
surprised even the authors of his day. 
The five greatest novels of the world are 
* * Don Quixote, " " Pilgrim ' s Progress, ' ' 
"Robinson Crusoe," the "Wandering 
Jew," and "Vicar of Wakefield," and 
strange to say the authors — Cervantes, 
Bunyan, DeFoe, Sue, and Goldsmith — 
were imprisoned or exiled for the audacity 
of their genius by the ignorance and 
tyranny of the age in which they lived. 
But the millions of human hornets who 
pursued them have long since gone to 
forgotten graves, while these universal 
characters still shine above the gloom of 
bigotry and shall continue to irradiate 
the midnight of coming ages. 



60 Oliver Goldsmith 



DRAMAS AND MISCELLANEOUS 
LITERATURE 

^ Goldsmith professed no worldly creed. 
/Nature was his Bible and right his religion. 
The catholicity and benevolence of his 
spirit soared over the earth with a halo 
of celestial beauty and went out to all 
mankind like warm rays of sunshine or 
the refreshing dews of the dawn. His 
flight of poetic fancy wings away from 
the highest peaks of Parnassus, and in 
his tribute to the Village Preacher, indi- 
cates his belief in one eternal God. 

" A man he was to all the country dear, 

And passing rich with forty pounds a year. 

•X- * -x- * -K- " * 

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the 

storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are 

spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 



Oliver Goldsmith 61 

In January, 1768, his comedy of the 
* ' Good Natured Man ' ' was produced at 
Covent Garden, and in March, 1773, 
* ' She Stoops to Conquer ' ' was rendered 
at the same theatre under the manage- 
ment of Coleman. The characters of 
" Honey wood " and " Marlow " in these 
plays are strict counterparts of the vacil- 
lating, blundering, credulous conduct of 
glorious Goldsmith. His novels, poems 
and plays were simple autobiographies, 
and the secret of his success and endur- 
ance is the impossibility of separating the 
author from the man, who honestly 
acknowledges his failings and humanity, 
securing at once our pity and sympathy 
and commanding our admiration and 
love. 

In the interval of regular work he wrote 
the lives of Beau Nash, Bolingbroke, 
Parnell, Voltaire, the "Citizen of the 
World," the "Bee Papers," and other 



62 Oliver Goldsmith 

fugitive works. Even many of the 
''Mother Goose" and "Goody Two 
Shoes " are ascribed to his prolific pen. 
The finest poetic production from his pen 
was the ''Deserted Village," which ap- 
peared in May, 1770, through Griffin, 
;/ who gave the poet one hundred guineas 

I for the manuscript, or about five hundred 

t dollars — no bad price in those days, but 

worth ten times more. If there was any 
doubt before as to the poetic excellence of 
Goldsmith, it was now banished forever. 
The polished lines, the mellifluous coup- 
lets and the round, sonorous flow of the 
perspicuous periods, joined with the 
cauterizing rebuke given to luxury, arro- 
gance, vice and tyranny — and the beau- 
tiful description of village life and rural 
innocence, has secured for the poem a 
front place in the golden pages of British 
classics. While the ' ' Traveler ' ' may 
have more consistency in plan and phi- 



Oliver Goldsmith 63 

losophy, it has not such perfect rythmic 
measure, nor such a variety of home and 
heart pictures. Its simplicity is its 
crowning glory, and there are more mono- 
syllable words in the poem than any other 
of equal length in the language, not ex- 
cepting the immortal lines of Homer and 
divine sentences of Shakespeare. y 

Could we to-day put a tongue in the 
Mitre Tavern, the bountiful homes of 
Reynolds, Davies and Johnson, what an 
echo would arise out of Fleet Street, 
Leicester Square, Russell Street, and the 
Inner Temple — haunts made memorable 
by the wit and genius of illustrious men. 

That great personification of toadyism, 
Boswell, has left us in his life of Johnson 
many rare bits of wit emanating from the 
writers and talkers of his day. He seems 
to have been created as a tender to John- 
son's engine, or a burr on the back of the 
Grand Llama of literature. He had a 



64 Oliver Goldsmith 

peculiar aversion to Goldsmith, and 
sought every opportunity to vent his 
spleen on the poet. Some one in the 
presence of Goldsmith said of " Bozzy " 
that he was a Scotch cur. * * No, ' ' said 
''Goldy," "you are too severe. Tom 
Davies threw him at Johnson in sport and 
he has the facility of sticking." While 
the poet could not shine in conversation 
with Beauclerk, Johnson, Burke, or Gar- 
rick, he often astonished them with his 
sententious remarks. Johnson frequently 
acted curt and brutal to " poor Goldy," 
which led him to say that if the pistol of 
Johnson missed fire he knocked you down 
with the butt end of it. Yet while John- 
son took unusual liberties with the poet, 
he would not tolerate such conduct in 
others. When Boswell spoke disparag- 
ingly of Goldsmith, Johnson said : "You 
are mistaken, sir; Dr. Goldsmith is a 
great man and one of the first authors. ' ' 



Oliver Goldsmith 65 

During the last years of the poet's life 
he wandered around with Bohemian 
chums through inland shires in search 
of peace and health, visiting friends or 
taking the waters of Bath, where Beau 
Nash, the monarch of politeness and 
fashion, reigned over society for more 
than half a century. He went to Flor- 
ence for a few weeks with the widow 
Horneck and her two beautiful daugh- 
ters, whose friendship he secured and 
maintained to the end of his life. And 
although his "Jessamy Bride" — Mary 
Horneck — married some years after his 
death and survived the poet sixty-six 
years, she never forgot the funny little 
man that jumped into the fountain at 
Versailles in an effort to prove his dex- 
terity for the admiring eyes of his sweet- 
heart. 



66 Oliver Goldsmith 



EXIT 

When he lay dead in his coffin in 
his quarters at the Temple, on the 4th of 
April, i774j a slender, sweet- faced woman, 
dressed in mourning, was seen to pass 
through the line of beggars, tinkers, and 
Bohemians, and clip from his scanty locks 
a few strands of hair, place them in her 
bosom and disappear as silently as a nun 
behind the flowing folds of a black veil. 
This was Mary Horneck , his ' * Jessamy 
Bride, ' ' who inspired the affections of the 
poet, and, as Washington Irving says, 
' ' rendered her interesting throughout 
life and hung a poetical wreath above her 
grave." 

The last literary gem that fell from the 
jeweled fountain of his brain was the poem 
"Retaliation," touching oflf the members 
LofC. 



Oliver Goldsmith 67 

of the Literary Club, who had made him 
the butt of some Bacchanalian cheer. 
Garrick satirized the poet with some wit 
with his celebrated lines : 

"Here lies Poet Goldsmith, for shortness called 
Noll, 
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor 
Poll." 

Goldsmith made this reply to the jeal- 
ous Garrick : 

•* Here lies David Garrick, describe him who 

can — 
An abridgement of all that was pleasant in 

man ; 
As au actor confessed without rival to shine, 
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line. 
Yet with talents like these and an excellent 

heart. 
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. 
Like an ill-judging beauty his colors he 

spread. 
And bespattered with rouge his own natural 

red ; 



68 Oliver Goldsmith 

On the stage he was natural, simple, aflfecting — 

*T was only that when he was off he was act- 
ing. 

With no reason on earth to go out of his way, 

He turned and he varied full ten times a day; 

He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack. 

For he knew when he pleased he could whistle 
them back. 

Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what 
came, 

And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for 
fame ; 

'Till his relish grown callous, almost to dis- 
ease, — 

Who peppered the highest was surest to 
please ! " 

Garrick made a reply, containing mean, 
personal allusions, which are only remem- 
bered as a contrast to the keen and just 
cuts conjured up by the magic wand of 
our benevolent, good-natured poet. When 
lie came to the last and best name belong- 
ing to the Literary Club, Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, the illustrious painter, he left the 



Oliver Goldsmith 69 

lines unfinished, and from his nerveless 
grasp dropped the potent pen that aston- 
ished the age in which he lived and has 
electrified the world down to the present 
day — and shall continue to bless it with 
his rare voluptuous periods when tomes 
of pompous platitudes are mouldering in 
forgotten archives ; and even when the 
lone traveler of Macaulay, wandering 
from the wilds of New Zealand, shall 
stand upon the broken arches of I^ondon 
Bridge amid desolation and solitude, sur- 
rounded by crumbling palaces, temples 
and towers, I imagine that he will hold 
in his hand a volume of Goldsmith and 
ponder upon the ruins of another Deserted 
Village ! 



Farewell, dear Goldsmith, thy majestic muse 
Will sing forever, and shall never lose 
The spirit of thy noble, gentle heart, 
That can not from our daily lives depart ; 



70 Oliver Goldsmith 

But, from the deepest gloom of care and strife 
Shall echo sweetly through the trials of life ; 
Soothe in every grief, shine even o'er despair, 
A golden treasure always sparkling there. 
Above thy tomb, rare flowers of fadeless hue 
-Shall bloom forever and thy fame renew, 
And weary pilgrims shall their steps incline 
To worship at the glory of thy shrine. 
Pale poverty or wealth adown the years 
May read " Sweet Auburn " through their smiles 

or tears, 
Sigh with the Parson, laugh with village boys, 
Mix with all their woes, mingle in their joys ; 
And with the Village Master and his jokes 
May turn from town and dwell with country 

folks ; 
Drink at the ale house, dance upon the green. 
And round the hawthorn bush renew each scene 
That blessed the rustic swains of long ago — 
Ere landed tyrants brought them ceaseless woe. 
And when the village joy departs and fails, 
We '11 turn to other climes and fresher gales, 
Where Alpine mountains rear their giant form, 
Lifting their icy shoulders to the storm ! 
And frowning grandly o'er the vales below 
Where grinding glaciers thunder in their flow, 



Oliver Goldsmith 71 

Aud the wild avalanche with frightful sound 
Leaps from its moorings, startles, tears the 

ground ! 
Or if to Italy we wish to turn, 
Thy Muse, dear *' Goldy," will inspire each urn 
With tongues that tell of poets, painters, sages, 
Who left deep footprints in the rock of ages ; 
While in the mirror of the mystic mind 
You picture every thought that thrills mankind. 
And when we tire of soft Italian skies 
Your magic flute shall make our spirit rise. 
Where the French grandsire, skilled in gestic 

lore, 
Dances beneath the burthen of three-score, 
Or where the dykes of Holland boldly stand 
To battle back the ocean from the land. 
Thy lingering lyre still sounds a pensive lay 
Where man aud morals melt into decay — 
Where Albion lawns and London's gilt and glare 
Your tireless muse still sings o'er cruel care ; 
And though you sigh o'er England's wasted 

charms, 
" The land of scholars and the nurse of arms," 
You yet can boast that freedom's highest reach 
Is but to lay proportioned loads on each — 



72 Oliver Goldsmith 

Deploring penal laws that grind and kill, 

The poor man's wreckage and the rich man's 

will. 
But in the club-room and the parlor scene 
We catch your antics when in velvet green, 
Your songs and dances with a romping glee ; 
Your truthful heart is light, and pure, and free 
As airs that wing o'er bright Arcadian bowers 
To kiss bright dew drops from the fairest flowers, 
And leave behind a glow of radiant dyes 
To thrill our souls and fascinate our eyes. 
Long shall your pleasing, honest, native art 
Inspire the throbbing of each heavy heart ; 
And though grand, pompous names attract our 

view, 
We '11 turn to truth and find eternal love in you ! 



THE END 



Je 



fi/t 



JAN 2 190! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 151 674 7 



